 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
Vinoba Bhave THE young man lit a fire and, in the presence of his mother, started assigning his degrees and certificates to it. When his bewildered mother tried to stop him, he said politely: "I will never need them, mother. My path is different." Vinoba's path was 'different' indeed, and no one knew it better than his mother.
For someone who would eventually become the most vocal supporter of Gandhi's non-violence policy, Vinoba Bhave, in his youth, was on the verge of becoming a firebrand revolutionary. He was inspired by Swami Ramdas's Dasabodh and Bal Gangadhar Tilak's writings in the Kesari. The young Vinoba was so disturbed by the British and their attitude towards Indians, that he had actually vowed to kill at least one Englishman in his lifetime. As a student he was brilliant until his sixth class, but he gradually lost interest in studies. Later, mathematics and philosophy were his favourite subjects. "Next to God if I hold anything best," he once admitted, "it is mathematics." When he was on his way to Bombay to appear for his Intermediate Examination, he alighted, on an impulse, at Surat, and took a train to Banaras. Once there, he started learning Sanskrit, and studying ancient scriptures. In due course, he also learnt many Indian languages, besides picking up French, Arabic, and Persian. Vinoba took the vow of celibacy at a very young age. He was a man of strict self-discipline who began his day at three in the morning. In spite of his spiritual leanings, Vinoba found himself in the thick of the Freedom Movement. When he took part in the Nagpur Satyagraha, he was imprisoned for four months. He was jailed again for his part in the Civil Disobedience Movement. While he was in prison, he gave weekly discourses on the Bhagavadgita. These were later published in Marathi as Gita Pravachane. A man who believed in practising what he preached, Vinoba decided to live among the the Harijans of Nalwadi. Gandhi sent Vinoba to Guruvayur, Kerala, to fight for the right of the Harijans to enter temples. Vinoba also participated in the Salt Satyagraha, and was arrested. He was arrested again in 1942 because he took part in the Quit India Movement, and was given three years for it. After Independence, while he was working with the Harijans of Poachampalli, a rich landlord donated 100 acres of land for the welfare of the downtrodden. Thus the famous Bhoodan Movement was born with a view to enabling the landless peasants to have their own piece of land. In his endeavour he walked village to village all over India covering more than 40,000 miles, and managed to get 16,77,7111.6 hectares of land for the poor. Vinoba Bhave believed
every village ought to be a self-sufficient unit
manufacturing its own basic requirements. He did not
favour the growing of cash crops, as reliance on them
makes the farmers greedy, and destroys their sense of
brotherhood. "Now that political freedom has been
attained," he told his countrymen, "we have to
work for the establishment of equality. I have called
that Sarvodaya. It is for the establishment of
this that I am going village to village. I call this my
five-year plan. If all of you take up this work for the
next five years and during that time succeed in
transferring five crores of acres of land, then a great
non-violent revolution has taken place in India." |
K. L. Saigal SUFI Salman Yusuf had a number of people coming to him for various reasons. Some had domestic problems, some professional, others were suffering from a terminal illness. But one day a woman approached him. She had a young boy of 13 by her side. She had come to him because her son was an aspiring singer, but with the coming of adolescence his voice had begun to crack. The Sufi advised the boy not to sing for a couple of years, but did teach him a zikr and a nazm, and told the boy that he should hum the composition, and not sing it aloud.
Son of a tehsildar working for Jammu and Kashmir, Saigal began his career with the Railways at Moradabad. Later he started selling typewriters for the Remington Company in Kanpur. There he met one Harish Chand Bali, a friend of R. C. Boral. the head of the music department of the New Theatres, Calcutta. Boral was a bit apprehensive about a Punjabi wishing to sing Bengali songs. To make matters worse, this six-feet-one-inch aspiring singer and actor was beginning to bald. How could he be a singing hero? But when Boral heard Saigal sing, he needed no further persuasion. A string of albums and films followed: Subah ka Sitara, , Chandidas, Devdas, President, Dhoop Chaon, Zindagi, Tansen, Street Singer, Soordas, Shahjahan and many more. For a singer not trained
in classical music, his range was wide. Be it Rabindra
Sangeet, hori, kirtan, baul, thumri, ghazal, bhajan, or
geet, Saigal sang with uncommon command over his
voice. It may come as a surprise to many that apart from
Hindi and Urdu, he also sang in Bengali, Persian, and
even Tamil! At a time when ghazals were either
read or sung in tarannum, Saigal concentrated on gayaki,
making the ghazal an extremely popular form of
light music. Besides immortalising poets like Ghalib, and
singing scores of bhajans and thumris, he
gave us such classic film songs as: Jab dil hi toot
gaya, Do naina matware, Ai dile bekrar kyon, Ek Raje ka
beta lekar udane wala ghoda, Main Kya aanu kya jaadu hai. |
Sir Jadunath Sarcar THE place is Bodhgaya; the year1904: Four distinguished personalities are engaged in a very serious discussion. You have Rabindranath Tagore, Prof Jagdish Chandra Bose, Sister Nivedita, and Prof Jadunath Sarcar. They are disturbed by the announcement of the Partition of Bengal, and are wondering how to avert the impending division of their beloved land. While the others are a little depressed, Professor Sarkar assures them that they need not worry as long as they had 'Gurudeb' with them. To bolster their spirits, Professor Sarcar recites a poem by Tagore, that he (Jadunath) had translated a few days earlier:
There were many aspects to Professor Sarcar's personality. He was a poet at heart, a prolific writer, football enthusiast, but above all a historian of uncommon abilities. Born into a rich family, Professor Sarcar started his long and illustrious academic career at Presidency College as Professor of English and History in 1898; the following year he was transferred to Patna College. After the plans of Partition were abandoned, he was transferred to the newly established Bihar and Orissa Educational Service. He was often transferred from one university to the other, not because there he was not wanted, but because he was too brilliant, and everyone wanted him. Sir Jadunath believed that although English was indispensable, the importance of Indian languages could not be ignored. He stressed the importance of secondary education, and laid a very strong emphasis on independent thinking: "India cannot afford to remain an intellectual pariah, beggar for crumbs at the doors of Oxford or Cambridge, Paris or Vienna. She must create within herself a source of the highest original research and assume her rightful place at the School of Asia, even as Periclean Athens made herself the School of Hellas." As a teacher he was so dedicated to his work that he conducted all his classes even on the day of his retirement. Just before his retirement, the Governor of Bengal appointed him Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University. For a man of his learning and intellect, honours and awards were there for the asking.The Royal Society of Great Britain and Ireland made him an honourary member in 1923; The English Historical Society invited him to become a Corresponding Member in 1935,The American Historical Association of Washington nominated him an Honorary Life Member in 1935, the Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay made him Honorary Fellow. And so many doctorates were showered upon him by various universities that in the end he stopped accepting them. The Panjab University honoured the great historian with the publication of Sir Jadunath Sarkar Commemoration Volume in 1957-58. In his long career, he wrote over two dozen authoritative books on history, translated Persian historical works and records, translated Tagore's works into English. Professor Sarcar's enormous literary output could be judged by the fact that a list of his works, published in Life and Letters of Sir Jadunath Sarkar runs into 17 pages! But the Professor had his own share of misery. In a string of personal tragedies, he lost three sons, four daughters, two sons-in-law, and a grandson. As he was advancing in years, his wife, Kadambini Debi became an invalid. Being a man of iron constitution, he nevertheless carried on writing, and of course reading his favourite authors:"The greatest gain of my life has been the companionship of the writings of great literary masters of the past — Sanskrit . . . literature and the Upanishads, European . . . literature, history and biographies . . . . These have given me a new kingdom into which no enemy can enter. In that Kingdom I get a new life." (To be
concluded) |
 |
 |
After the incident, as Vinoba was trying
to figure out the future course of his life, he chanced
upon to read an extract of a speech delivered by Gandhi.
The experience changed his outlook on life forever. He
wrote a letter to Gandhi, and was surprised when he got a
prompt reply. He wrote once again, and the response was
as usual immediate. This interesting correspondence
carried on for a while, until the two men decided to meet
in person. "Providence took me to Gandhi, and I
found in him not only the peace of the Himalayas but also
the burning fervour of revolution, for freedom. I said to
myself that both of my desires had been fulfilled."
Gandhi himself was so impressed with his new disciple
that he asked him to take charge of the then newly
established ashram at Wardha. 
The little boy, Kundan Lal Saigal, would
grow up to become one of the legends of Indian light
classical music. But all his life he never forgot the
lesson the Sufi had taught him, and that was about all
the training he ever had in music. And yet when the
Prayag Sangeet Samiti organised its annual music
conference, it was Saigal that people wanted first of all
on stage. In the presence of such masters as Pandit Onkar
Nath Thakur, Ustad Faiyaz Khan, V. D. Paluskar, Narayan
Rao Vyas, and Vinayak Rao Patwardhan, Saigal did not have
the courage to walk up to the stage and perform. He was
finally persuaded to sing, and he very reluctantly agreed
to sing. He began with a few bhajans and ghazals
followed by songs from Street Singer, Chandidas,
Yahudi ki ladki and so on bringing the house down
with a thunderous applause. After the show he approached
Ustad Faiyaz Khan for blessings. " I have nothing I
can teach you that you do not know," the Ustad said,
"I have learnt a lot from you myself . . ."
What voice is it that I hear